When less is more: Obscuring detail to make your point. (Photocritique).

Group portraits are published frequently in organizational publications. Most are made for purposes of recognition and identification, not as communication. They are little more than pictures of people having their pictures taken.

We've all seen those dreary pictures of six people sitting at a table, smiling at the camera. A caption might tell us that they are members of a certain committee or project team. But there's nothing in their placement, response or setting that tells us anything about them as a group. Such pictures are cliches. They have no credibility as an editorial message. They fail to communicate.

Credibility and meaning are essential to any group portrait. With just a bit of thought, time and effort, photographers can make a group portrait communicate the nature of the group by pointing out those things that bond it as a group, giving it identity, character and purpose. Settings, placement, costume, body language and expressions can all contribute to making a group portrait communicate.

Our first two examples appeared on the front and back covers of The Business of Caring, published by CIGNA Corp. in Philadelphia for its customer service and marketing employees. Both group portraits feature families seated on the steps of their homes. Yet they tell different stories. On the front cover, we meet a family from Bangladesh. Despite modest means, this family was able to buy a home with CIGNA'S help. Photojournalist Paul Fusco uses a wide-angle lens and low vantage point to stress this growing family's needs: the long legs of the two girls dominate the image--they need space, the kind of space that their new home can offer them. Their father, who fled Bangladesh to avoid death at the hands of political foes, takes a back seat in this portrait. He and his wife may be smaller in scale than their children, but the responsibility before them is large.

While Fusco's front cover image is editorial in nature, the back cover portrait dominates an institutional advertisement. Yet it also effectively represents the obligations any family must face. Shot in sepia tones, rather than full color, it is less realistic, but more symbolic. The sepia tonality gives the portrait a sense of timelessness. Body language is relaxed yet intimate--a circular flow of hands and arms bonds these people as a family entity. Even though this image is part of an ad, viewers will note its credible, straightforward imagery.

Our third example is a reasonably effective corporate group portrait. Walgreen World photographer Roark Johnson (Walgreen Corp., Deerfield, Ill.) builds it around the point of the story: service. The nine members of this diverse group of people--former Walgreen's pharmacy technicians--are building new careers helping pharmacy staffs have "more good days than bad ones." A desire to serve others comes through to us because of how Johnson sets up his picture. He places his subjects into varied rows of four, three and two. Some stand, others sir. Johnson stays with them long enough to get them to relax. Using a wide-angle lens, he shoots them from above. Seen from this position, they appear ready and eager to serve others. This variety in placement, as well as the camera's vantage point, creates the bond that gives this group its identity.

Our fourth and final example appeared in a Bristol-Myers Squibb (New York, N.Y.) publication's story on company efforts to combat HIV/AIDS in southern Africa through a five-year, US$100 million program. These children, as well as five others, were left in the care of their grandmother when her four sons and their wives all died of the disease. These children are thought to be HIM-positive as well. This group portrait puts a human face on a sad and terrible story. It is not a happy face. The children's body language and response to the camera range from solemnity to sadness to curiosity. Framed in the doorway of a house in a hill town in Swaziland, the faces of these vulnerable children will haunt all who look at them. They are among some 200,000 orphaned by AIDS in South Africa alone. This portrait credibly represents the huge task that Bristol-Myers Squibb is taking on.

Philip N. Douglis, ABC, is director of The Douglis Visual Workshops, completing its 30th year of training communicators in visual literacy. Douglis, an IABC Fellow, is the most widely known consultant on editorial photography for organizations. He offers a comprehensive six-person Communicating with Pictures workshop every May and October in Oak Creek Canyon, near Sedona, Ariz.